A rally designed to protest the tax policies of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was interrupted by a counter-demonstration in Toronto on Saturday.
“There’s many people, many Canadians that oppose Justin Trudeau and what he’s doing right now, and I wanted give people an opportunity to come together, voice their opinion, meet other like-minded Canadians,” said Ronny Cameron, chief organizer of the “Let Trudeau Know He Has To Go!”
Cameron told Toronto’s CP24 that the rally had no secret agenda.
“As soon as we turned a corner, Antifa rushed us, they started getting into our face, they just started throwing punches, they started kicking,” Cameron told CP24.
The protest was also a assembled to highlight national opposition to Trudeau’s $10.5 million payout to confessed killer and former al-Qaida terrorist Omar Khadr for alleged violations of his rights while he was held as a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay.
The Antifa groups who disrupted the demonstration said they knew what the group was “actually” protesting and it wasn’t really about Trudeau and taxes.
“They may be out here to criticize Trudeau, but they’re actually out here to say, ‘We can’t have refugees,’” Sarah Ali told CBC News. Ali identified herself as a member of Solidarity Against Fascism Everywhere, one of the groups represented at the counter-demonstration.
“You can have a criticism of foreign and domestic policy without being a fascist. But when you start to herald to a mythical white past, or when you start to associate with neo-Nazi or white supremacist groups, that’s when you start crossing that line.”
Although they carried placards pleading for love and tolerance, the counter-protesters mixed it up with the anti-tax demonstrators. Toronto police arrested four people. It was not clear from which faction those arrested were from.